Page 36: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (October 2013)

36 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News ? OCTOBER 2013 Marine Design Annual ? The World?s Largestto the second 10 should see the price dropping to an average of $185 million per ship. Raw materials com-prise most of the cost with each vessel requiring 55,000 tons of steel.China Shipping paid $136.5 million for its 18,400 TEU ships, although the single engine design has been described as ?fairly basic.? Hong Kong Asset Manage- ment is believed to have paid $140 million per ship, Bank of China $140.5 million and UASC is understood to have paid $150 million each.The ripple effects of these mega vessels will be felt throughout the shipping business. Introducing large new tonnage to a trade without increasing total capacity means smaller ships have to essentially ship out. The preferred option is to cascade the excess vessels down to other trades, which often means merely transferring an overcapacity situation from one trade to another. The transpaciÞ c and north-south trades have borne the brunt of cascading, as mega ships were inserted into Asia-North Europe services, the world?s busiest con- tainer route. To absorb as much capacity as possible, lines have employed super slow steaming, accelerated scrapping, handed back chartered tonnage and pulled in orderbooks. Despite initial resistance to slow steaming, shippers have grown accustomed to longer voyage times and have adapted their supply chains accordingly. Guar- anteed times have replaced speed, even though it now takes six days longer than in 2008 to ship containers from Shanghai to North Europe. The two-propeller engine that can push the Triple-Es to 23 knots while operating at slower speeds gives the ship an operational sweet spot lower than the Emma Maersk. Design improvements see the engines in the second batch of 10 vessels reduced from eight cylinders to seven cylinders.The more efÞ cient engines make low fuel consump- tion one of the Triple-Es greatest advantages. Com- pared to the 13,000 TEU ships of competitors, vessels of 18,000 TEU are believed to burn around 35% less fuel per container. In fact, Maersk said the vessels will burn 30,000-35,000 tons of fuel a year, which over their lifetime will be close to three times the price of the ship. As fuel accounts for well over half of all voyage costs, this kind of fuel economy is a powerful incentive for ordering the new generation of container ships.(Images courtesy Maersk) MR #10 (34-41).indd 36MR #10 (34-41).indd 3610/2/2013 4:18:44 PM10/2/2013 4:18:44 PM